


Opening Up

by PaladineWriter101 (midsummernight13)



Category: Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency (TV 2016)
Genre: Fluff without Plot, M/M, Pre-Relationship, just two idiots, mentions of gun fire but no explicit violence, sitting around and talking about their feelings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-29
Updated: 2019-06-26
Packaged: 2020-05-19 23:23:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,333
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19365805
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/midsummernight13/pseuds/PaladineWriter101
Summary: The evening started, like so many of Dirk's did, with him and Todd being chased down the street by a group of thugs.





	1. Chapter 1

The evening had started, as so many of Dirk’s did, with him and Todd bolting down the street while being pursued by a group of armed thugs. Todd swore and yelped as bullets whizzed past them and collided with passing cars, the trees lining the sidewalk, the buildings around them—but no people, which was a good thing, _better_ than good, by Dirk’s reckoning, but certainly not something they could expect to continue.

“This way!” Dirk called out. He grabbed Todd by the arm and, dragging the other man along, took a hard left down a nearby alley. They were forced to a stop not three seconds later by a sturdy looking brick wall. Behind them the gun fire fell silent, only to be replaced by encroaching footsteps.

“Now what?” Todd asked. Dirk pushed against the graffiti covered surface in response. The wall stubbornly (and perhaps somewhat predictably) stayed put. He shoved again.

Still nothing.

“Dirk!” Todd hissed. Loud, taunting voices had joined the approaching footsteps.

“Well it’s not as though escape route miraculously appear from no where,” he said, throwing his hands up in the air in exasperation. “Sometimes a wall is just a wa—”

“Dirk, the man hole cover!”

Dirk looked down at the spot Todd was pointing to. Sure enough a man hole cover stared back at him.

He let out a surprised “oh” as Todd crouched down and struggled to pull the cover open. Dirk lunged forward to help him, and together they managed to pull it open just enough for them to squeeze though. Dirk dropped down first, bypassing the ladder entirely and landing on the damp ground below with a thud. Todd was more careful and climbed down, pausing just long enough to pull the cover closed.

Apparently they’d managed this just in time. Dirk could hear the faint sounds of of someone running overhead, accompanied by people shouting at one another. He held his breath and waited for one of the thugs to notice the exact same thing Todd had and pull the metal cover open. After an eternity the thugs retreated, snapping and snarling at each other’s stupidity as they went.

“I think we’re good,” Todd said, his relieved voice bouncing off of the concrete walls around them, despite how soft he was keeping it. He started climbing the ladder, saying, “You know, whoever we’re up against sure isn’t choosing their goons based off their brai—what was that?”

A loud, shrill beep, barely audible through the concrete ceiling and metal cover, sounded off like an alarm above their heads. Just under the beeping was the low rumble of a motor.

“I might be mistaken,” Dirk said, “but I _think_ that may be a truck.”

“What? No, nono!” Todd shouted, his voice all but drowned out by the beeping at this point. “Don’t park here, we’re down here!”

The truck pulled to a stop directly over their exit. Todd kept shouting and banged on the man hole cover, but the attempt to catch the attention of whoever had blocked them in proved futile.

“I don’t think they heard you,” Dirk said.

 


	2. Chapter 2

“ _Shit._ ” Todd gave the manhole cover a final hit before dropping back down. “Do you see any other way out of here?”

For the first time Dirk took the time to study their surroundings. They had dropped into a small, small, rectangular room which was lined with black wires, which sprouted from from a small power box in the corner. Outside of that the room was lacking in several areas, but the most significant fixture that was missing was a door. Which made the answer rather obvious, he supposed, but that didn’t keep him from answering.

“No.”

Todd swore again—he’d been doing that quite a lot that evening—and ran a hand over his mouth. “Now what?” he asked.

“Now,” Dirk said, tentatively sitting on the ground, “we wait.”

Todd’s responding groan made it abundantly clear what he though of _that_ idea (i.e., not much) but he sat down next Dirk anyway. “I guess it’s not the worst place we’ve been stuck,” he said. Dirk thought back to some of their previous exploits, like the house within a house and Patrick Spring’s death maze, and hummed in agreement.

A comfortable silence fell over them. Dirk wasn’t sure how long the two of them sat there, but it was a nice change of pace. No one threatening them, nothing in the room seemed like it was about to kill them, no reason to panic or worry…

Well, Dirk realized with a jolt, almost no reason to worry. “Do you have your pills?”

Todd fished the medication out of his pocket and held it up for Dirk to see. As he pocketed them again, he said, “They’re kind of hard to forget, with you and Farah bringing them up as often as you guys do.”

“Sorry,” Dirk said, not entirely sure what he was sorry for. Not for worrying about his friend, that would be a stupid thing to be sorry for, but for...reminding him of how sick he was, maybe? He doubted Todd was fond of having the illness that didn’t run so much as galloped through his family tree dragged center stage.

“Don’t be,” his friend said, a little too quickly. “I just wish you guys didn’t feel like you needed to worry about me.” Something vulnerable crept into Todd’s voice as he spoke. Then he cleared his throat, and any vulnerability was gone. “It’s not like it was when Farah and I were on the run; I’m not going to just run out in the middle of—” he waved his hand “—a case, or whatever.”

Of course, the fact that he hadn’t run out of his medication in the middle of the case _yet_ didn’t mean it would _never_ happen. It took all of Dirk’s self restraint to keep from pointing that out.  Another bout of silence, much more tense than the one that came before it, drifted over them. For a moment it seemed as though the two of them were going to spend the rest of of their evening in a very awkward position, and they likely would have if something Todd had said hadn’t kept nagging at him.

“I don’t feel like I have to worry about you,” Dirk said suddenly. Todd side eyed him and he rushed to add, “And I don’t think Farah does either. We just do.”

“Thanks.”

“What I _mean_ is: you’re our friend. Of course we don’t want you to get hurt.”

“Thanks,” Todd said again. His lips quirked into a small smile, and he actually sounded sincere this time around. Dirk returned his smile and covered Todd’s hand with his own.

Judging by Todd’s startled little jump he was just as surprised by the action as Dirk was, but he didn’t pull away. He looked down at their joined hands and after a beat said, “You know Dirk, I—” He was cut off by the screech of metal scraping against concrete. They jerked their hands away from one another and scrambled to their feet, preparing to face off against the thugs that had managed to discover their hiding place.

Their panicked clamoring turned out to be for nothing. Instead of a group of armed goons a scowling Farah looked down at them. “I’ve been trying to call you guys for an hour,” she said. “What happened?”

“There was a situation, involving guns and running,” Dirk said.

“Are you okay?” When Dirk responded with a thumbs up she added, “Well come on then—I need to show you something I found about the case.” Her face disappeared from view.

Todd looked up at the space she had previously occupied with bemusement. “How’d she get rid of the truck?” he asked. Dirk shrugged and began working his way up the ladder. As a holistic detective he had learned that there were some things that you didn’t question, and Farah was one of them.


End file.
